"Those Honored Dead"
"Why do you fly the flag today?"
My Grandson wants to know.
I fly it for the graveyards
Where the countless crosses grow.
I fly the flag for children
Whose fathers are a name.
A half-remembered memory
of a face within a frame.
I fly it for the families
of sons and daughters lost.
They know the price of liberty
How terrible the cost!
I fly the flag for veterans
who lost their youth in blood.
And saw their comrades slaughtered
in the carnage and the mud.
I fly it for the ones who marched
In cadence off to war
To close their eyes forever
Upon some foreign shore.
I fly the flag for grief poured out
Upon a granite wall.
The laying-on of hands that heals
The scars within us all.
I fly it for the sound of Taps---
That melancholy tune
That lays to rest those honored dead
Who always die too soon.
Copyright 1994 Marion G. Mahoney